Mayur Jobanputra

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Idea Portfolio

white-brain

I’m always thinking about startups. On this page I have listed many of the ideas I have come up over the past 20 or so years. Most of these never become anything more than idea. Some take an initial shape (often a doc and domain), and a few event go to market or are being worked on now.

What do I after I see a problem worth solving? 

Here is my process (post the initial idea):

  1. Check for domain names – this is my first step to see if someone has thought of this
  2. Research to see if someone else is building this already
  3. If they are, visit their site and “glean” what they discovered and (perhaps) what they missed
  4. If nobody seems to be, explore the idea further to see if a community exists and if someone mentions the same problem
  5. Explore the business and startup canvases
  6. Consider from a PM lens, “What could the MVP look like?”
  7. Think about partners and influencers that could participate
  8. Think about the Wizard of Oz version of the startup 
 

At this point, if I get a good feeling and think it’s worth pursuing, I start the heavy lifting like looking for potential teammates and co-founders, developing a mission/vision (something new that I’m working more on), and most important of all: finding and talking to customers to gauge interest.

In the past, (prior to becoming a product manager), I would have jumped head first into building. The act of building would let me dive a little deeper into user pains and values.  Nowadays, I put more effort into problem discovery and team building.

Enjoy the list 🙂 

Makeuptalent.com

Building MVP
The Problem: Makeup artists have no obvious way to build their site, get clients, and grow their business
Hypothesized Solution: A one-stop directory, agency, community, LMS, and more

20/02/15

I first registered the domain after having prior experience working with a client, Julie Brown, a makeup artist

17/08/16

I placed the project on hold due to personal circumstances

12/11/20

I restarted the project as I still didn't see any competitors entering this area of business

GoodMingl.com

Actively Considering
The Problem: Communities and social apps are broken. Users join, rarely engage, and are left participating in conversations that don't matter.
Hypothesized Solution: The entire idea of social media needs a reboot. I'm starting by building a direct competitor to Slack, Discord, and FB groups. If you want more info, visit goodmingl.com.

Shuttlr

Just an idea
The Problem: I use multiple apps and methods to publish, note, and journal
Hypothesized Solution: An app that connects to the other apps that I use like Gdocs, Notion, WordPress, knows what kind of content I'm publishing, and updates those target documents automatically. Sort of a virtual secretary. Powered by AI of course.

07/01/21

I got this idea from watching Liam Bolling talk about resumes at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1Bbl8QBd6I. He gave some good tips about what questions to ask yourself when thinking about resume bullets. I wanted to drop those notes down into a Google doc that I'm keeping (I should probably move to notion at some point I suppose).

07/01/21

Commentor App

Just an idea
The Problem: Commenting with keyboard is slow and painful
Hypothesized Solution: A desktop utility that watches the app you use (Slack, Discord, FB, LinkedIn, etc), lets you record an audio file, transcribes and automatically posts a text reply and a link to the audio file

09/01/21

Idea inception thinking about working with Jason Calacanis at Launch as a social media manager. How would I possibly comment on all these platforms? Typing is so slow. There has to be a better way. How about a little app (windows/mac) that sees the app I use, and then posts a reply for me by transcribing my audio response. That would be amazing and a real time saver.

FounderScouts.com

Just an idea
The Problem: VC's have trouble finding promising early-stage founders
Hypothesized Solution: Instead of launching a community, course, or saas event, hire a professional "founder scout" at founderscouts.com. Founder Scouts are professional founder finders that join startup communities and identify promising founding teams that don't yet have a voice.

11/01/21

Idea inception thinking about the VC and startup ecosystem. I love startups and founder. I wonder if a marketplace of this kind could exist where people are paid as a professional founder scout.

Resume Secretary

Just an idea
The Problem: Job seekers don't have good ways to track their job applications
Hypothesized Solution: A virtual assistant that tracks your application progress by email, gives you insight into what resumes work and don't work, and which versions of your resume seem to be working best

14/01/21

I'm tracking my job applications in a very primitive way right now. I'm using google docs and a folder. I name each resume with the title of the JD. If I get rejected, I note down "rejected" on the file name. It's primitive, but it works well enough. Sure would be nice if I could hire an assistant to do this.

Video NDA

Just an idea
The Problem: Getting someone to sign an NDA is a pain
Hypothesized Solution: Use video and AI to virtually interview someone

14/01/21

Thinking about the painful process of developing an NDA, and then sending to someone to sign it. Why can't we do this over video?

Daily Wins

Just an idea
The Problem: I want an easy way to digitize and reference my daily journaling. I love journaling, but archiving and finding stuff is a pain.
Hypothesized Solution: Daily Wins to the rescue. Journal to your heart's content, and then send your journals in to be digitized, transcribed (cause we can do that now thanks to Amazon) and placed on the internet forever.

17/01/21

Selling pre-formatted journal blanks makes sense. For example, a box to lock/unlock your pages so that you can share privately, and an another section to enter the journal date.

17/01/21

Amazon Textract to the rescue

Rental Resume

Just an idea
The Problem: Most landlords need credit history and proof of income to get a rental
Hypothesized Solution: A third party identity and credit management company that builds a professional "rental resume" that you can share with a potential landlord

19/01/21

An idea I thought about a few years ago when I was trying to move to another rental but the most significant barrier is lack of employment proof.

The Product Podcast

Just an idea
The Problem: Where are the product podcasts?
Hypothesized Solution: Just a podcast..

Defrost

Just an idea
The Problem: Building custom web apps is difficult. You need a Designer and Engineer and have to invest a tonne of money to get something standing up.
Hypothesized Solution: An app that you build programmatically - an abstraction layer that sits above your application that lets codify the business logic. A custom SDK for business logic that uses AI to assist.

21/01/21

Thinking about this as watch the webflow interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkJPxDgUGMA.

EmergeCharge

Just an idea
The Problem: What if you own an electric car and are far from home or at work? And you are low on charge and there are no chargers around?
Hypothesized Solution: Enable homeowners to create a charging station lane by signing up, getting an installation, and completing their profile using an app. The home owner pays nothing for an installation (or buys it outright) and earns a residual income above their cost of electricity. Both the home owner and EC earns a cut. and the customer pays for the electricity cost.

MockMe

Just an idea
The Problem: Mock interviews are either expensive to train (you have to signup) or are hard to schedule
Hypothesized Solution: An Uber for Mock interviews. You signup, start mocking one time for free, and then invite others on to the platform to do more mock interviews.

21/01/21

Viral component - the more people you invite, the more mocks you get to run. You can create your own private mock groups, or find public groups that you can join. The app automatically assigns mocks with people above, at and above your skill or experience level based on a shared calculation at the end of the mock. Who was more experienced? Who was less experienced?

VideoPopsicle / WatchLaughTalk

Just an idea
The Problem: I would love to watch a video with friends and pause easily
Hypothesized Solution: An app where we can vote on a video, watch, have it pause automatically based on audio, and record the commentary

27/01/21

I just finished my first video with Teresa on Exponent and thought.. hmm.. wouldn't it be great if we watched a video together and could share/comment?

27/01/21

How to create virality: You invite friends and the only way for them to become users and launch their own popsicle is that you have to first do a video with them and then earn a certain score. The score is calculated on the number of pauses, re-starts, sounds recorded during (laugh, cry, talk, etc) etc.

27/01/21

Users that get more popsicles can invite more users to the platform. The users can also sell invites if they like and earn a cut too.

Startup Games

Just an idea
The Problem: There are so many brilliant founders around, but no easy place to collaborate on ideas
Hypothesized Solution: A community platform where you work on startup ideas by contributing your knowledge and market insight, and gain points that can convert into equity later - should the idea go to market

24/01/21

I have been running this ideas board for a few weeks now. It's great, but I would love to collaborate on ideas with others. Maybe have live group meetings to work on specific artifacts like a canvas or something.

How to Build a Startup course

Just an idea
The Problem: Aspiring PMs don't really have a good grasp of how to build a startup and don't see the inherent learnings in that process
Hypothesized Solution: A pre-recorded course that PMs can take that walks them through all the phases of startup building

02/02/21

Something like...

> Ideation - from personal experience
> Mission/Vision
> Product design
> Estimation
> Potential users and pain points
> Prioritization focused on PMF
> Building a team
> Roadmapping and tactical work
> Measuring and Iterating

02/02/21

Each of these steps are eventually in the wheelhouse of a good PM and I think 90% of aspiring PMs don't have the skills or understanding of how to do this. This could easily be a course + live 1:1 or live group consults.

Expected outcome: Aspiring PM goes through each of each of these stages, they learn PM work in real-life and then showcase that on their social/resume

Crowd Collect

Just an idea
The Problem: Companies occassiionally need to crowdsource data collection
Hypothesized Solution: A service companies can engage that connects their request with crowds

03/02/21

Could a business exist to connect crowds with data needs?

Drop Stock App

Just an idea
The Problem: It's difficult to keep constant track of my stock portfolio and to setup stop loss entries
Hypothesized Solution: A mobile-first trading app that automatically sets up a stop loss entry for a pre-determined threshold

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